SmartThings and Smart Vents

by Nathaniel Padgett
on August 03, 2015

If you are unfamiliar with SmartThings, it is a platform that connects hundreds of smart devices together and gives its community members the tools to create custom device experiences. We’re big fans of the SmartThings team and have worked closely with them over the past two years. It is incredibly exciting to go live on a platform and see so much hard coming to fruition.

Here are the product features with our SmartThings integration:

Control your airflow, from 0% to 100%. Smart Vents can be grouped into rooms or controlled individually.

Track temperature changes in your home. For the first time ever, know how your HVAC system is performing from within your air ducts, right from your smartphone.

Make sure your Smart Vents have ample battery power and know exactly when to replace them. Your Smart Vent’s four AA batteries last up to two years.

Use SmartApps to integrate your Smart Vents with other devices on the SmartThings platform, such as thermostats, temperature sensors, and motion sensors.

SmartThings has a vibrant developer community that builds custom SmartApps and integrations for a slew of connected home devices. One of the most impressive SmartApps we’ve seen was developed by Yves Racine, an active member of the SmartThings developer community and one of our earliest beta testers. Yves founded Maisons Ecomatiq, a technology company in Quebec that develops automated energy-efficiency solutions for the home.

Yves developed a SmartApp for the Ecobee 3 that allows homeowners to use their connected thermostat and Smart Vents together. We are working towards our own Ecobee3 integration for next year, but in the meantime, Yves’s SmartApp is a great interim solution if you plan to use or already have a SmartThings hub. Yves recently updated his SmartApp to work with any connected thermostat on SmartThings!

Speaking of thermostats: what can you find on SmartThings? There are eleven supported thermostats so far, ranging from Honeywell Lyric to Ecobee. Nest also works with SmartThings via a community-built Device Type Handler. With one (or multiple) of these thermostats added to your SmartThings profile, you can use SmartApps like the one Yves built to create connections between those devices and your Smart Vents.

Have an Amazon Echo? SmartThings recently added support for Amazon’s voice-controlled home hub, enabling hands-free operation of any devices on SmartThings. We recently test drove this integration with the Smart Vent and it worked amazingly well. Huge shout-out to Shawn Privratsky, one of our SmartThings beta testers who was the first to control his Smart Vents with an Amazon Echo.

SmartThings is the first of many important integrations we are working on, and we couldn’t be happier to have them as a launch partner. If you have SmartThings and want Smart Vents right now, head over to our website and place an order. If you already have a pre-order and would like to use your Smart Vents on your SmartThings hub, shoot us an email and we’ll send them this week or next.